# Product as the homepage at Rows: +72% sign-up conversion

- Outcome: Won
- Page type: Homepage (SaaS)
- Elements: Product led, Signup flow
- Test run by: [Rows](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/rows/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://growth.design/case-studies/adobe-trial-ux
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/gd-rows-product-as-homepage/

Rows made its homepage the product itself, a working spreadsheet anyone can use without logging in, and its sign-up conversion rate rose 72%. People who signed up from this sandbox activated 30% more often than those from other channels. Rows made the change; it was published as a side example in a Growth.Design case study, and it is a before-and-after comparison, not a split test.

## Result

**+72% sign-up conversion**

- Sign-up conversion rate: up 72% after the change, per Growth.Design citing Rows.
- Activation: sandbox sign-ups activate 30% more often than sign-ups from other channels.
- This is a before-and-after result, so other changes over the same period may have played a part.

## Control

A conventional marketing homepage that described the product and led visitors to sign up.

## Variant

Visitors were dropped straight into a working spreadsheet with no login, and asked to sign up later.

## Why it likely won (our reading)

- Visitors feel the product's value before being asked for anything.
- People who sign up after using the product already know what they're getting, which may explain the higher activation.
- Removing the login wall cuts the steps between interest and first use.

## Caveats

Before-and-after, not a split test, and only mentioned in passing in Growth.Design's Adobe free-trial teardown. Growth.Design cites Rows' own blog post and Growth Unhinged; sample and time frame were not shared.

## How to run this test

- Hypothesis: If we let visitors use the product on the homepage without signing up, then more of them will sign up and activate because they experience value first.
- Primary metric: Visitor-to-sign-up conversion rate
- Guardrail: Activation rate of new sign-ups
- Guardrail: Infrastructure cost per anonymous session
- Guardrail: Abuse or spam usage
- Who should test it: SaaS tools that deliver value in a single session with no setup, such as editors or calculators. It is harder for products that need data imports, integrations or team setup to be useful.

---

Credit: Rows ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/gd-rows-product-as-homepage/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.
